( dpa ) - There are things everybody knows about bees. They have stings in their tails, are meticulous in constructing their homes, dance to communicate with each other and do all they need to do in life in about six weeks.
A team at Queensland Brain Institute under Professor Mandyam Srinivasan knows a great deal more.
They have an acute sense of smell, are good navigators and can remember where they last had a meal.
"Bees are the Rolls Royce of the insect world due to their amazing brain," the institute's Charles Claudianos said. That brain is the size of a sesame seed but is 20 times the size of that of a fruit fly.
As lightness is everything in flying things, the bees' brains rely on a small range of compounds to sort floral scents. Their odour receptors can detect even the smallest scent molecule in the air.
They can distinguish between hundreds of different aromas and also tell whether a flower is carrying pollen or nectar by sniffing its scent from metres away. They navigate by smell, colour and distance.
"The scent triggers navigational memories of where to go and what the colour of the flowers will be - a bit like a whiff of cologne might remind you of someone you knew a long time ago," Srinivasan said.
The institute intends to apply bee technology to unmanned aerial vehicles. UAVs navigate and control their speed by measuring how quickly they pass objects by.
